Entertainment

A Brief History of the Status Update

Every time you change your status on instant messenger or send a tweet, you're taking advantage of the simplicity and power of status updates. How did status updates begin and how have they evolved since their first iterations?

For a brief historical analysis of how the status update as we currently know it has evolved from an early form of instant messaging in the 60s to the multifaceted, rich-media update of today, we'll take you back in time and highlight some of the important milestones as short-form messages transitioned from static to status.

This post is part of a Mashable mini-series providing analysis of social media’s smallest big trend: the status update. The series is supported by the TurboTax SuperStatus Contest, which invites you to win up to $25K for an interesting Twitter or Facebook message.

A Look Back

The rise of the status update in popularity has been a long time coming. Before you could tweet, update your FacebookFacebook reviews status, or even edit your IM away message, a primitive form of instant messaging — the catalyst for all short-form messaging — was being used for multi-user communication as early as the 1960s.

Before instant messaging arrived at its current state, it evolved from the niche but very popular Bulletin Board System (BBS) message boards in the 80s and 90s. BBS later died down in popularity and the Internet forum and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) both rose. IRC exists to this day and furthered the concept of user modes for group communication, one-to-one messaging, and private messaging. Think of user modes as away or available messages (like on chat), and a primitive status update of sorts that signaled to IRC servers that users were invisible, available to receive notices, or IRC operators.

In the late 80s and early 90s, Quantum Link, choosing later to go by the name of AOL (you may have heard of them), offered connected Commodore 64s user-to-user messaging called On-Line Messages (OLM). OLM eventually became the product we all know now as AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). Of course, elements of BBS and IRC were embedded into the instant messaging platform, which is how status came to be the mainstream concept often forgotten as just a way to tell friends or colleagues that you're online and ready to chat.

The Facebook Boom

Primarily taken for granted in purpose and function, the status update found its rebirth in Facebook's platform, where user after user clamored to tell their extended network of trusted friends what activities they were passively participating in via third-person updates (ie. Jennifer is writing a blog post), or site-based activity (eg. Jennifer and Jake are now friends).

Very much the catalyst for status as a prominent feature, instead of just a way to indicate availability, Facebook's approach to status was both ahead of the curve and flawed by design. The original Facebook status message lost its glory to TwitterTwitter reviews because of its initial site-dependent constraints. Facebook eventually took a few cues from the hot microblogging tool that stole its thunder and started to support SMS, removed the "is", and became more real-time.

Facebook's current approach to status is a richer multimedia experience, where users can add photos, videos, links, and even application activity.

Twitter and Status Update Hysteria

In an insightful interview with the LA Times, Twitter's co-founder, Jack Dorsey, explains that Twitter found its origins in the notions surrounding vehicle dispatch, and that "it was when Dorsey saw these systems through the eyes of the social, mobile Web, where anyone can squawk from anywhere, that Twitter's Big Idea was born."

Dorsey explains that instant messenger was, in fact, at the core of the initial ideas around Twitter (evolving in name from Stat.us to twittr, and then finally to Twitter). "This aspect where you can just locate your buddy list and at a glance locate what your friends are up to, or what they say they’re up to. I found the same parallels in dispatch — here’s a bunch of ambulances and couriers reporting where they are, and here’s my friends. Now, the problem with IM is that you’re bound to the computer, so it really limited the interestingness of the messages."

With those ideas in mind, Twitter was built with the inherent limitations of SMS messages (SMS supports 160 characters, which became 140 to leave room for Twitter usernames), so that people could easily send and receive status messages regardless of where they were in the world. Twitter, and the very idea of the status message, wouldn't be what it is today without the mobile element and the notion that status is ubiquitous, but in fact chained to a specific moment in time (every tweet has a timestamp).

What Twitter has essentially done is create a way for end users, application developers, and data researchers to leverage the power of the shared and collective update message. Users and citizen journalists have free rein to break news ( ie. the Denver Plane Crash), developers can tack on additional layers of functionality, and everyone else can watch what happens when search becomes rich with real-time updates and contextual data.

What Twitter did for the status message is make it malleable, omnipresent, and information rich, which means we're likely to see the concept continue to evolve in function over time.

What Does the Future Hold?

Despite the pseudo-buzz around nanoblogging, shorter form updates are not the future of the status. In fact, status updates will actually take inspiration from its origin and become more real-time. If you need proof of concept, just take a look at the new FriendFeed. The real-time interface can be overwhelming if you're following a high volume of users, but the real value of real-time status updates is better, faster, richer data — think GoogleGoogle reviews search on steroids.

But another trend you're going to see more of will be the ability to do more with your status updates. The vehicle for message delivery won't matter, it could be SMS, Web, IM, Twitter, FriendFeedFriendFeed reviews, Facebook, Ping.fm, UbiquityUbiquity reviews and the like, but the end result will be a status update that does more.

Its purpose will grow in ways that will let you create to-dos for your GTD system, add notes to your productivity tool of choice, schedule meetings, retrieve information from disparate data sources, find nearby friends, and compete in challenges or games. Most of these tasks can already be accomplished in the present, and we happen to think Deadline's got the dead simple status update for function thing nailed. Additionally,Foursquare's taking over where dodgeball left off, making status updates location-aware. You can certainly expect even more multi-purpose status messages in the very near future.

This post is part of a mini-series providing analysis of social media's smallest big trend: the status update. The series is supported by TurboTax, which invites you to win up to $25K for an interesting Twitter or Facebook message - learn more at SuperStatus.com.

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